


And should I then presume?

by thewickedkat



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Awkwardness, Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, Navel-Gazing, Pre-Relationship, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-02 00:06:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17877368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewickedkat/pseuds/thewickedkat
Summary: MacCready is observant. His mouth has a mind of its own.





	And should I then presume?

There’s something different about her, today. Mac can’t quite put his finger on it--some subtle _thing_ his hindbrain registers rather than an immediately visible quality--and he keeps flicking glances at her, trying to puzzle out what it is.

They’re sitting in the mid-afternoon sunshine on the picnic decks she’s built in Sanctuary, taking a couple days off from their traipses about the Wealth. Vee had wanted to do some maintenance on her weapons and Mac needed to finally do the mending on his duster he kept putting off. Bad enough that it’s missing an entire arm; even though he can write that off as giving the coat ‘character,’ the rest of it had steadily been growing tattier and shredded and Vee keeps nagging him about the extra ballistic weave she’s got laying around.

Vee has her rifle field-stripped and the components on a large piece of oilcloth, her legs splayed out on either side of it, her torso bent forward and propped up on her elbows as she very carefully takes a bit of steel wool to the firing pin. The tip of her tongue sticks out from the corner of her mouth.

Distracted, the needle slips in Mac’s fingers and stabs into his thumb. He hisses.

It’s not her hair--though clean, it’s still as unevenly cut and shaggy as usual, strands pulling free from the knot she’s tied it into and sticking to her temples, soot-black against the paleness of her skin.

‘So I was thinking day after tomorrow we can head out again, if you’re up for it,’ she says, and blows the carbon dust off the pin. ‘But you may not like it. Roger Warwick told me about Spectacle Island, said there'd been people tried to settle there but their signal went dark couple weeks back.’ She lifts a shoulder, scrutinising the pin and tilting it thoughtfully. ‘We’d have to get a boat from him, and I know you hate water.’

Her clothes aren't anything she hasn’t worn before, just ratty jeans and a once-white t-shirt with a spattering of holes in the left shoulder, as if it had caught a load of buckshot once upon a time. The bumps of her vertebrae are visible through the fabric as she leans again, and the overstretched neck of the shirt bows open around her collarbone.

Heat rises on the back of Mac’s neck as he sucks on his thumb.

Vee mistakes his silence for reluctance, and she clears her throat slightly. ‘Or I could ask Deke if he wants to go.’

‘What? No, no, I’m good. I mean, water sucks, but I’ll go,’ he says hurriedly.

‘You sure? Trip’ll take a few days. Dunno what we’ll run into on the island.’ Vee sets down the pin, apparently satisfied with its cleanliness, and picks up the scope.

‘We’ll handle it,’ and he pulls a stitch through the heavy weave, endeavouring to keep it even with the others.

He feels more than sees her frown. ‘If you’re sure,’ she offers uncertainly, and he nods instead of speaking.

Maybe she just slept well. Or this is just what she looks like when she’s relaxed. He sneaks another peek at her, at the way her bony ankles protrude from the fraying jean cuffs, how she seems to be perfectly comfortable folding herself in half to work, the smear of dirt on her cheek, just beneath her lined eye--

Wait.

His hands still in their sewing and he squints a bit, giving up all but the pretence of subtlety.

Her _lined_ eye. What he’s taken to be a smudge of--whatever, wasteland-soot and sleepcrust--at the corner of her eye is actually too straight, too deliberate and dark to be anything other than purposeful. Just a little line, no more than a centimetre, tilting up like a question, making her eye look larger and somehow more vulnerable and open.

Vee is wearing makeup. She _never_ wears makeup, much less to sit around Sanctuary and clean fu--frickin’ firearms and get earth under her bitten-off nails.

But it suits her: simple, nothing ornate or over-painted; just that charcoal black along her lashes extending outward like the tail of a comma.

‘Do I have something on my face, Mac?’ She doesn’t even look up from buffing the scratches out of the scope’s lens. There’s no hint of smugness in her tone, no telling _Gotcha,_ not even a _well, you noticed, now compliment me_ like Lucy used to sometimes pull, when she’d get a new dress or a new hairstyle from Butch, then wait for Mac to see and if he didn’t, reserve the right to get grumpy about it.

The heat spreads from his neck up around his ears. ‘Makeup,’ he says gruffly to hide the appreciation. ‘You’re wearing _makeup,_ ’ but it sounds more like an accusation than a _hey, I noticed this tiny thing because I like looking at you and I totally don’t mean that in a creepy stalker way._

‘Oh. That.’ Like it’s not a _thing,_ not something completely out of character for her and not at all like it’s making him want to look at her _more._ Her fingers come up to touch the skin just below her eye. There’s gun oil staining her cuticles. ‘Curie. Says it’s a bonding experience or something. She wanted to practise.’ Colour rises in her cheeks. ‘I haven’t worn makeup in--in a long time. Wasn’t ever really good at it.’ She goes back to buffing, her fingers moving over the glass in too-careful circles, her back and shoulders now taut with self-consciousness. One of the shoulders lifts slightly. ‘It was just for fun. Not a big deal.’

_It looks good,_ he wants to say, _but you don’t need it._ He wants to say he appreciates the simplicity of it, how the clean line accentuates the shape of her eye and how it’s refreshing compared to the overly-done-up faces he’s seen in Diamond City and Goodneighbor. It’s right on the tip of his tongue, _I like it,_ but what comes out is ‘Why? What’s the point? Not like anyone’s gonna see it.’

But that’s a bold-faced lie because _he’s_ already seen it, and MacCready might have been raised by a pack of kids in a cave near the DC ruins; he might be only twenty-two years old with his head still firmly planted in his ass, but even he knows that that is obviously the _wrongest_ thing to say to a girl when she’s got makeup on for no good goddam reason other than her friend wanted to make her feel pretty when she cleans her gun.

Vee’s fingers barely pause in their motions, but the hiccup is there, and her head ducks down like she’s unconsciously trying to make herself smaller.

_Shit,_ he thinks, stomach sinking, and wants to snatch the words out of the air because even staring down at the needle sticking out of his coat he knows she’s doing that going-away-while-still-being-here thing, boxing herself up carefully and precisely until her expressions are bland and smooth, that whatever smile she does with her mouth will be belied by the shadows around her eyes.

‘Eh, it’s just a thing for Curie,’ Vee says, but the cadence of her voice is measured, only the slightest bit tight around the edges.

‘It looks all right though,’ he offers weakly, and this time when he jabs his thumb it’s almost on purpose. _Stupid. Why couldn’t you just say that in the first damn place? Why’d you have to open your dumbass mouth at all?_

She makes a noise that sounds like a polite laugh and a dismissive snort. ‘It’s fine, Mac,’ and now there’s definitely a brittleness, a sort of fragility that from another person might be outright _hurt,_ bald and visible for all the world to see.

Mac opens his mouth but closes it again. Anything else he says would just be calling attention to it--calling attention to _himself_ \--and he knows enough to let that particular sleeping dog lie, so he shuts up and focuses on keeping his stitches small.

The shadows have ticked a few degrees eastward by the time Vee silently reassembles her rifle, movements exacting and economical, but Mac still isn’t done with his mending. She cycles the action a few times, making sure everything’s lubricated and smooth, then puts the scope to her eye to make sure the lens is clear. Apparently finding everything to her satisfaction, she gets up and stretches, spine popping as she rises on her toes.

Mac carefully does not look at the skin visible through the small holes in the t-shirt, or mark the way the collar slips down over a shoulder to reveal pale freckles. Mac focuses on pulling the curved needle through ballistic weave because Mac is not a creeper, dammit.

‘Be right back,’ she announces, and twists a few more _cracks_ out of her back. ‘Want me to do yours, then?’ A toe nudges his rifle barrel.

‘Sure,’ he replies, still not looking up, and doesn’t know if she’s still tense at his mouthy carelessness or if he’s just imagining the smoothness in her words. ‘Thanks,’ he adds, just a bit more oil on maybe-still-troubled waters, and she strolls off toward Cait’s bar.

The shadows slide about another inch before she returns with two bottles of cold Gwinnett, depositing one next to his knee, and he grunts in thanks as he ties off the thread. His fingers hurt from shoving the needle through so much fabric for so long but his coat is done, finally, and he looks up at her with a smile ready, flexing the cramps out of his hands.

Vee’s face is open, no lawyer-mask or distant politeness, but it’s been scrubbed clean, her eyelids still pink. She pops the cap off her beer and holds out the churchkey to him. ‘Trade you,’ and doesn’t touch his fingers when sliding the churchkey into his hand before taking his rifle.

Mac’s smile fades, disappointment in himself making the beer taste sour when he puts the bottle to his lips. _Fuck you, mouth, I’ll punch you later,_ feeling even worse, because she brings him a beer even after he sticks his boot in it and hurts her feelings. Damned if she’d admit it, though; she’d rather shoot someone than own up to being _soft._

Not that he’s any better. He stays silent while she strips his gun, the occasional tsk escaping her as she sets the pieces out on the oilcloth, meticulous as any diagram in a manual. The breeze picks up and he catches the scent of hubflowers and gun oil, sharp and clean and sweet like a secret.

A hundred times he starts to open his mouth.

A hundred times he doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the title comes from 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock' by T.S. Eliot, because i am a pretentious hack.
> 
> BIG BIG THANK YOU to the Writer's Block, without whom none of this would be possible. i haven't posted in donkey's years and it shows. feedback and concrit welcome.


End file.
